Eric Cantor's Legacy Is One Of Economic Destruction
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From day one literally, the night of President Obamas first inauguration Cantor was leading the charge to not just oppose Obama, but to delegitimize him denying him the conciliatory, bipartisan policy style he campaigned on, and turning even policy successes into the kind of grueling partisan battles that voters dislike. It was a deeply cynical maneuver, but a successful one. Cantor helped unite the Republican caucus around this scorched-earth strategy, and played a major role in the 2010 campaign that leveraged the grim results of that strategy into a new majority.
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Cantor complained loudly that the Senate was blocking the Houses job bills, but had the chutzpah to make this claim about jobs bills like a resolution expressing disapproval of net neutrality. He has consistently opposed extending unemployment benefits for the thousands of long-term unemployed. He even introduced the novel strategy of demanding spending cuts to offset emergency disaster relief.
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After months of efforts to end the (completely optional) crisis, Congress passed and the President signed the Budget Control Act, which created the pointless supercommittee process and eventually led to sequestration, a blunt-instrument package of cuts, including cuts to programs like Head Start and Meals on Wheels. Sequestration was terrible policy - It was yet another drag on an economy - and, even after his strategy made it happen, Cantor still complained about the sequester and blamed Obama for it.
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If you want to know Eric Cantors legacy, its not just about the forces that he encouraged and that backfired on him last night. Its a political style and an ideology that actively set back the economy, time after time. His cynical advocacy of Cut and Grow has had real negative consequences.
He tried to ride the tiger into battle, and the tiger ate him. His loss is richly deserved and poetically just, but it comes too late.
TPM
Yeah, fuck him.